


but virtue too

by evictionaries



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:50:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26800150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evictionaries/pseuds/evictionaries
Summary: Countless lives have found their end by Byleth’s hand and he has lived long enough to forget each one.He is always all that remains. He is always all there is.
Relationships: Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 3
Kudos: 65





	but virtue too

Byleth reaches out, fingers spread wide, and the ground rushes up to meet him.

Before he gets a chance to register what happened, Jeralt is kneeling beside him. One hand on his back, the other wrapped around his arm. Hand so big his fingers overlap.

“You okay, kid? What happened, you trip? Did you hurt yourself? That’s—oh, shit.”

And Jeralt, Blade Breaker, pales at the sight of blood. There’s nothing weapons and armour can do for an injured child.

Byleth sits back, legs crossed, staring at the glistening red pooled in his palm. A sea of legs flow around them, nothing but a churning blur in his peripheral. He brings the blood to his tongue.

“Don’t—”

Jeralt grabs his wrist, wrenches it away.

“Don’t. Don’t do that.”

Two days before, Jeralt had given Byleth his first sword. A tiny thing, barely more than a knife. He said the world is scary, full of even scarier people. And right then, with his eyes wide, grip firm around Byleth’s wrist—in that moment Byleth must be one of them.

Until Jeralt catches himself. Tucks away every tell, folds back into a seamless warrior.

“It’s not clean,” is all he says. His grip loosens, shoulders relaxing as he brushes his thumb over the heel of his child’s small hand. “But shit—I mean, that’s worse than I thought. Must be broken glass or something. Doesn’t it hurt?”

Byleth nods.

“It’s okay to cry, you know. Nothing wrong with that. Do you… wanna cry?”

Byleth shakes his head.

A shadow falls over them. Behind them stands a shopkeeper from a couple stalls down, offering cloth for Jeralt to wrap the gash. She’s got kids at home, she says—but oh, they’re all older now. Is this Jeralt’s first? They’re resilient, you know, you don’t have to worry so much. More often than not, it’s the fussing that makes kids cry rather than the spill itself. But this little man hasn’t shed a single tear! How brave he is!

“Yeah, he’s a real trooper.” Jeralt gets to his feet and lifts Byleth into his arms. “Excuse us, ma’am, we need to get this cleaned.”

Over Jeralt’s shoulder, Byleth catches one last glimpse of the waving woman before she’s swallowed by the crowd. Blood spills over and runs down his arm, cutting a vibrant path against his skin.

There’s a reason for everything.

There’s a reason why, when Byleth later takes a nap on his father’s chest, he hears the heart beating within but doesn’t feel anything when he presses a bandaged hand to his own. A reason why people call him the Ashen Demon years later. A reason why he stands apart even among hired killers.

A reason why he and Jeralt never talk about it.

A reason why it matters. A reason why it doesn’t.

“That was real stupid, what you did.”

Byleth’s eyes spin in their sockets and the world answers in kind. He anchors himself to pain—to the table digging into his bare back, to the sear of torn flesh eating into his side—and grabs hold lest he be swept away. He lives in it, exists in it.

He lifts his hand before his face. The hand of a man, unwounded but no less bloody.

“Rushing ahead like that,” Jeralt says. Standing guard by the door as he’s still on the clock. “Real stupid.”

Byleth lets his arm fall. Beside the table, shelves of merchandise rise to a beam ceiling, which arcs to the only window. Familiarity comes slow with his brain struggling to piece together every sense, but he eventually places them in their current employer’s warehouse, the backroom where they were first hired.

Light flares, throwing everything into sharp relief. Its manipulator, one of the company’s mages, sits at Byleth’s side with her hands hovering over his wounds.

Byleth slides his tongue over his teeth and swallows a medicinal aftertaste.

The mage he recognizes as well. He isn’t allowed to see doctors outside of Jeralt’s employ, after all. Thus the backroom surgery.

“I taught you better,” Jeralt mutters. Arms crossed, eyes darting all over, he’s looking everywhere but at his son, so Byleth looks away too. Turns his head and stares at the floor.

Children scream.

Their voices seep through the windowed wall, muffled by wood and mortar.

Not screaming. Laughing.

Bursts of squealing laughter just on the other side of the wall but Byleth’s breath easily overtakes them, swelling into a torrent as he runs, trees and branches whipping past, until he catches up to the man at the edge of a forest clearing, knocks his sword aside and kicks his feet out from under him.

Dead or alive said the woman that hired Jeralt, preferably alive, and that’s Byleth’s intention until a dagger is plunged into his thigh, bringing him down to the man’s level. Before he can recover, the dagger is in his side—once, twice, three times—over and over until Byleth lifts his sword and stabs it through the man’s heart.

Life fades with a wretched gurgle and gasp, almost inaudible beneath Byleth’s laboured breath. All he hears is rasping lungs, the wheeze of a dry throat, his body fighting for life even as it pours from him.

Byleth leaves his sword in the man’s chest, fumbling instead for the dagger’s hilt. The clearing stretches vast and vacant, offering no answers for his shaking hands. The moment he pulls the dagger free, he collapses next to the corpse, vanishing amidst the long grass.

Every breath tears Byleth apart. The body beside him is warm, its blood warmer. He breathes deep and shoves against it—against lifeless flesh and wet blood, denies it, struggling to his feet only to have his wounded leg give out. He drags himself forward, tangles his fingers in wildflowers. Their roots tear from the ground when they cannot hold his weight. He drags himself forward, sinks his fingers into the earth, black grit sticking to crimson wet. Gentle sunlight warms his back as a breeze chills the wet blood. Blind and senseless with pain, still he drags himself forward.

Countless lives have found their end by Byleth’s hand and he has lived long enough to forget each one.

He is always all that remains. He is always all there is.

Byleth’s arms give out and he falls face-first into pillows. Stars erupt behind his lids, far closer than those outside the windows—even from here at the highest point of the monastery.

“Hey.”

A hand pets his hair. When he turns his head Yuri is inches away, resting his chin on his shoulder.

“You okay? Am I hurting you?”

Body entrusted to the mercy of someone else, fucked slow in a rhythm at odds with his own, all Byleth can do is inhabit it. He moves against the bizarre sensation of something foreign inside him and barely has the sense to shake his head.

Yuri laughs.

“As cute as ever,” he says, “I love seeing you like this,” and other things Byleth doesn’t catch, all these murmured nothings between kisses.

Pain would be easier. Pain is sharp and real and Byleth knows where he stands with pain, but this is something unbearably gentle, a kind of restlessness spread all the way down to his toes.

Yuri’s hair trails down to the pillows, a lace curtain letting in just enough blue moonlight for Byleth to hold his gaze. His eyes are lidded and glossy. From eye to eye to mouth and back again, Byleth takes in every inch of Yuri’s face. He nudges his nose against the velvet of his cheek. Everywhere Byleth is, Yuri is.

“Mister Eisner? Can you hear me?”

Children are laughing. Byleth opens his eyes to shelves of merchandise.

The mage slips her hand under his shoulder and sits him up.

“Here, c’mon. Drink this.”

Momentum keeps Byleth tumbling forward and the world rolls upside down. In seconds he’s going to break his nose against the floor, smash his teeth in, except he’s still sitting, he’s fine, the mage is dressing what remains of his wounds. Rattling off aftercare instructions.

Whatever she makes him drink burns on the way down but clears his head. They’ll have another session in a couple says, she says, don’t push it or he’ll tear the sutures.

And with that she leaves, nodding to Jeralt on her way out.

Byleth grabs the shirt that had been pillowing his head and pulls it on, each sleeve a monumental task. The bloodsoaked fabric sits clammy against his skin, the stain spread far wider than the bandages underneath.

The children are quieter now, more indistinct. Farther away.

Slow footsteps scrape across the floor and then Byleth is staring at a pair of armoured legs.

“You’re looking better already,” Jeralt’s voice says. “Considering you looked pretty dead when I found you.”

As soon as the last button is fastened, Byleth’s arms drop like they’re made of stone. He turns his gaze from Jeralt’s legs to dust coiling in a beam of sunlight streaming through the window.

“Can’t exorcise a demon without holy water.”

“Funny.”

“I learned from the worst.”

Jeralt paces a couple steps before sighing and crouching down. He comes back up with pieces of Byleth’s armour and drops them onto the table. Byleth keeps staring at the dust. Everything else is nothing but vague movement in his peripheral.

“This is why I hate bounties,” Jeralt says. “Never easy, huh?”

Caked in dried blood, Byleth flexes his hand and his skin pulls tight as a glove.

Silence stretches between them. Even without looking, Byleth knows: Jeralt is peering down his nose, chin lifted to scratch at his beard. Always searching for meaning that isn’t there, trying to poke and prod some reaction loose. Though less often these days. They are, both of them, nothing if not accepting of their circumstances.

A weight rests atop Byleth’s head. The moment he recognizes it as Jeralt’s hand, it’s snatched away.

“Rest a bit,” Jeralt says, making his way over to the door. “I’m gonna go settle the payment. Head back to the inn when you’re ready. _Straight_ back, you hear? Don’t dawdle. Not looking like that.”

The door squeaks open but not closed. Still staring at the sunlit dust, eyes beginning to sting, Byleth can only sense Jeralt standing there, hand on the doorknob. When his eyes start to water, he finally blinks and looks up, confirming he was right: his father gazes back, looking older than he ever has.

“Demons bleed just the same,” Jeralt says. “Be more careful next time, kid.”

The door shuts behind him with a dull thud.

Byleth stares at it. Stares and stares unblinking.

The children are gone. Jeralt is gone. The only sound is Byleth’s own breath, whisper-quiet and barely there.

Byleth slides down off the table, moving gingerly, slowly. He gathers his armour and heads for the door.

They quit that town as soon as Byleth is fit to ride.

Hooves beat a steady rhythm against an ancient wooden bridge, across a frosted moor, along a city’s stone street; dew glimmers in the morning light, snowfall hides the moon, afternoon sun peels the entire company down to their undershirts; and Jeralt rides his horse in line with Byleth’s to tell him, “Kid, about this job.”

On a wooden bridge, a frosted moor, a city street in the north, west, south, east—Byleth listens. He watches, obeys. He survives.

And were he not born a demon, then surely this life would have made him one.

“About this job,” Jeralt says, and Byleth stares straight ahead, slipping a hand under his shirt. He slides his fingers over the healing sutures and in his head he’s tearing them open, digging his fingers into warm blood, living muscle, pulsing organs.

Someone grabs his wrist.

“Where are you going?”

Buried beneath furs and woolen sheets, Yuri is nothing but a lump in the middle of the bed with a mess of hair at the top and one arm outstretched from the side. His grip prevents Byleth from getting any further away than swinging his legs over the side.

A single drooping eye peers from between Yuri’s bangs. It turns to their hands. He lets go.

“Sneaking off after our first night together… you really have no sense for the romantic.”

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Well, you did,” Yuri mumbles. His arm disappears beneath the blankets, the mound of fur and wool convulses, then it reappears out the top with its other, grinding the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Sun’s barely even up…”

And he looks just as tired as that warrants. He’s pale, his eyes are puffy—but his cheeks are warm to the touch. Byleth brushes the back of his hand against them, pushes the hair out of his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Byleth says.

His hand keeps roving. His fingers trail over Yuri’s brow, down his nose. He traces the curve of his lips then leans down to kiss them. He kisses his cheek, his jaw, his neck.

A chill eats at Byleth’s bare body, the fire in the hearth doing little in the face of an oncoming winter. Much warmer is the arm Yuri wraps around him—then his chest after he holds back the blankets and pulls Byleth on top of him.

“Just a little longer,” Yuri murmurs, throwing the blankets over them. “Soon we won’t have mornings like this.”

Byleth presses a final kiss to Yuri’s collarbone, then rests his head against his chest. Yuri combs his fingers through Byleth’s hair, the heart in his chest beating steady and even.

“The next archbishop,” Yuri muses. “Not bad for the least religious man in all of Fódlan. Tell me, your radiance, where were you about to spend your last day of freedom?”

Byleth sighs and wraps his arms around the small of Yuri’s back.

“I wanted to check on some flowers I planted.”

Clouds part and sunlight burns through Byleth’s lids. He turns his head.

“They won’t bloom,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

But in a building of glass there’s no escape from the sun. It pours through the greenhouse’s every surface and reflects against Dedue’s white shirt. No matter how Byleth turns his head or shields his eyes, all he can do is squint at the flowers before them.

The merchant he bought them from said they should have beautiful white blooms. The book Byleth looked them up in had illustrations of a single petal—a spathe—wrapped around what it called a spadix. Like a cup. Yet these ones are nothing but leaves and stalks.

“These are from Brigid,” Dedue says. “Most likely the soil doesn’t have what they need. You’ll need to find the right fertilizer.”

“How?”

“Trial and error.” Dedue kneels down. “That’s all gardening is, trial and error.”

He reaches out and slides his thumb over one of the flowers’ leaves, muttering something about how they’re not over- or under-watered, which is something. A place to start from. And his hand is scarred. His face is scarred. He came back so scarred. But he came back. And his hands are just as gentle as before.

“What?”

“What?”

Dedue frowns. “You’re staring.”

So Byleth stops. He crouches beside him, crossing his arms across his knees.

“Once I figure it out, how long will it take until they bloom?”

“I’m not sure. Why, is there something you need them for? There would be better options. These have no nutritional or medicinal value. On the contrary, they’re poisonous. But not strong enough to kill.”

“No, that’s not—”

Byleth sighs and buries his face in his hands, squeezing his eyes shut against the light and the beginnings of a headache.

It’s stupid. It’s even more stupid when he tries to put it to words.

What he has isn’t a need but a want. Something selfish to which he needs to earn the privilege. Something that won’t matter if this war kills him. Because he’ll die doing the only thing his own scarred hands know and then Dedue will take over as the flowers’ caretaker and then they’ll bloom, finally.

Byleth lifts his head and his reflection stares back from a black window. Boarded up on the outside, turned into a mirror that shows him dark hair, dark eyes, bloody hands—a spectre from the stories Mercedes tells.

“Professor.”

Behind him, Yuri wipes arterial spray off his cheek.

“Professor,” he says—says it like some running joke between them, like when they look at each other they’re both wondering how a reject like him ended up in his position, “this is a secret between you and me, right? You understand.”

As if Byleth has anyone to tell, surrounded by princes and knights. As if he has any reason to when he’s wiping the same blood off his dagger. Dimitri knows what Byleth is, carries the same weight, but any more and he’s liable to break. This isn’t something Byleth would share with him.

Shadows move past the door, speaking quietly amongst themselves—Yuri’s people doing a final sweep—while the room around him and Byleth is frozen and silent. Half-empty cups and still-warm food on the table mark a meal interrupted. Half-beneath it, leaking from a hole in its neck, is the corpse of the man to whom this all belonged.

Byleth clenches his shaking fist around his dagger. Moments like these he thinks he might understand what it’s like to have a heart that pounds. Even without one, the rest of his body is still pulled tight and poised for violence. But the fighting is over and he’s never been good at the parts in between.

Yuri crouches and digs through the body’s pockets.

“This is becoming a bad habit,” he says, pocketing a coin purse. He gets to his feet. “Having you around, I mean. But c’mon. Before anyone else comes knocking.”

In contrast to Byleth’s dark hair, Yuri’s pale strands seem to emit their own light. Byleth follows like a moth to flame.

As soon as Yuri pushes open the back door, a frigid wind bites their exposed skin, kicking up the first snowfall of the year. Narrow alleyways do little to protect them and within moments, Yuri changes their destination, backtracking to an inn he promises is worth the detour.

At its farthest end, Yuri leans against the bar.

“It may not look like it,” he says, “or feel like it… but we did a good thing today, friend.”

Byleth hooks his foot around the bar stool and works through his third glass.

What Yuri’s doing, Jeralt does it too. Reassurance and rationalization. But Jeralt never pretends to be good. Even if they never go out of their way to harm anyone, those they do harm, they harm for their own survival. That’s the way of the world.

Byleth puts down his mug and licks his lips clean.

“What do you think is going to come from this?”

Yuri takes a drink, long and slow.

“Something better,” he says, and he starts going on about finding the remnants, getting them to join his gang instead. How he can offer them more. At the very least, they can find sanctuary in Abyss.

Byleth props his head on his hand and blinks through the buzz spreading through his body.

Yuri swipes his finger through the condensation dripping down his mug. “Byleth, do you… remember what I told you? About the old man?”

Byleth. _Byleth_. Not friend, not professor, not with the usual sneer. Byleth, Byleth, Byleth, and what a beautiful voice Yuri has.

“You and me will never be like saintly little Flayn or Prince Dimitri and his honorable knights, but we can still do good. And we can do it by means that only _we_ are capable of. And then… maybe there will be a point to all this.”

Watching Yuri’s hands, Byleth asks, “Did you know that my heart doesn’t beat?”

Yuri squints, giving Byleth this strange smile that’s not a smile, not with his frown and curled lip. “Is this a line? Are you hitting on me?”

“No.” Byleth holds out his hand. “Here.”

After only enough hesitation to make a show of suspicion, Yuri holds his hand over Byleth’s, inches away from touching until Byleth grabs his wrist and presses his palm to his chest. For a moment Yuri searches, as if Byleth’s heart is on the wrong side, and then places his other hand on his own chest. He shakes his head.

“That doesn’t mean anything. I can’t feel mine either, not when we’re just sitting here.”

Wrapped around Yuri’s slender wrist, half Byleth’s fingers lay over the cloth of his sleeve, half lay against his warm skin.

He lets go.

“Even if I was to start running, it wouldn’t beat. It never has. No matter how far I run or how hard I push myself.”

Byleth flexes his fist open and closed, slides his thumb over his calloused palm, the jagged nails he tears with his teeth when they get too long. Yuri’s hand goes back around his drink. Soft skin and nails kept short with a file.

“Why bring this up? This your way of saying you don’t care?”

“My way of saying I can’t.”

“Then why do you keep insisting on coming with me? Is this fun for you?”

Over Yuri’s shoulder, the rest of the people crowded into the small bar are hunched over their tables or watching a woman picking at some stringed instrument in the corner. Her music blankets everything, smothering hushed conversation beneath it, making Byleth’s words for Yuri only and Yuri’s only for him.

Jeralt likes places like this.

“It’s familiar,” Byleth says, “more than anything else.”

More than hunching over a desk trying to figure out lesson plans. More than trying to refuse trips into town because being around so many people is draining him. More than not having anything to say while watching teenagers struggle to come to terms with their first kill.

What Byleth knows is the sound of a man’s teeth clicking together when a lance is thrust through his jaw and into his brain. What Byleth knows is where to apply pressure to choke the life out of someone as efficiently as possible. What he knows is battle tactics where things are easily mapped out and planned and Dorothea isn’t uncomfortable around him and Sylvain doesn’t hate him and Hubert doesn’t treat him like a feral animal.

‘Fulfilling his duty as a professor’ was the answer he had given the first time Yuri asked why he kept insisting on coming. Doing what he’s paid to do, like always. Not what he wants. He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t want anything.

“You know, I’m kind of disappointed,” Yuri says. “I didn’t think you were a coward.”

Byleth freezes. His mug nearly slips from his slackened grip. Yuri finishes his drink in one go, slamming it as he gets to his feet. When he catches sight of Byleth’s open mouth, he grins.

“Oh, I know. You’re the big, scary Ashen Demon. Men are scared of you, not the other way around, right? None so notorious but I’ve met plenty of people like you. I expect I’ll have the misfortune of meeting many more.” Yuri shakes his head as he yanks his cloak free from where it’s caught on a loose upholstery nail. “You’re only doing what you need to survive, right? The world is hard and cold and people are inherently selfish. Right?

“Byleth, listen—plenty of people with perfectly working hearts are still capable of horrible things. It’s a choice they make. So your heart doesn’t beat. Your lungs still take in air. Your skin still feels, your tongue tastes, your eyes see, ears hear—you’re still stuck here with the rest of us. And it is awful. It’s hard and it’s awful but you can choose to make it better. Just as soon as you grow the hell up.”

Byleth jumps to his feet. Something makes his skin itch, right up his spine where he’ll never be able to reach. The corner of Yuri’s mouth pulls back into a twisted grin.

“Ah, don’t tell me I hit a nerve?”

Byleth unclenches his jaw. Relaxes his shoulders.

“No,” he says. The itch grows worse.

Yuri stares at him, stares right through, and for the first time Byleth knows what Dorothea was talking about. He slides his tongue over his teeth, pressing hard into their sharp edges.

“When I look at you,” Hubert told him once, “I feel I can almost see a second self lurking beneath the surface. It is as if you are in constant dialogue with something inside your heart—something with desires very different from your own.”

“They say you would destroy your enemies without a hint of emotion on your face.”

“You truly don’t know, do you? Just what was Jeralt thinking raising you this way?”

The only reason Byleth is starting to feel pulled in countless different directions is he’s not alone anymore. Everyone has something to say about things no one was around to care about before. He has to carefully choose his words and watch his tone and remember social etiquette. There’s people for his ripples to hit. But eventually he’ll leave like he always leaves. He’ll go back to peace and quiet and none of this will matter.

Byleth pulls his jacket off the back of the stool, slams his payment on the counter, then heads for the door without looking at Yuri once.

Yuri, he’s always talking about points and meaning and there’s a reason for everything, yes, but more often than not the reason is that there’s no reason at all. Cause and effect. Sometimes the reason is that everything is chaos, the result of millions of people existing at once.

For all his talk, Yuri is silent when he finds Byleth kneeling beside Jeralt’s body.

All he is is a hand on Byleth’s back. Then he’s two hands trying to drag him off when strangers in steel come to take Jeralt away, only gripping tighter when Byleth elbows him off. And then he’s all warmth, cradling Byleth’s head as the second tears Byleth has ever cried stain his shoulder.

All the meaning and reasons they could want are in the journal Jeralt kept instead of talking to his son. Yuri reads it over one shoulder, Sothis over the other, and Byleth stares straight through.

Dimitri tells him to let himself feel because this will end like everything ends. Yuri tells him the same thing. That he’ll be okay in the end, that his fire will carry him through.

Days where Byleth wakes up and bathes and eats and teaches and Jeralt just isn’t there will keep coming. Time marches on, no matter what dominion Byleth claims over it.

“Wow,” Yuri says. He slides his fingers through Byleth’s hair, pushing it back. Byleth lets his neck bend. “Right down to the root, huh?”

He’s close. Byleth leans against a broken desk, essentially pinned against it with how close Yuri is. He keeps doing things like this lately. Byleth’s new hair is just another excuse. The two of them, alone in the dark of Abyss, where Yuri’s reach extends as far as he wants.

“Even your eyes,” Yuri mumbles. He grabs Byleth’s chin and looks directly into them. “Any other changes? It’s still you in there, right?”

“I’m more talkative,” Byleth says.

Yuri laughs and that carries them for a while. “Well, I still like you just the same as I always have,” he says, and if only Byleth could have melted into that voice. If only it all ended there.

“Do you at least feel any better?”

There’s no movement save for the flames in the torches making the shadows dance and pulse with life.

“No,” Byleth says.

His father is gone. Sothis is gone. Once more he has continued to live at the cost of someone else. Once more he has made nothing of it.

“I liked my hair,” he says.

Yuri smiles and lets go. With no part of them touching, suddenly the space between them is a vast gulf.

“It’s a small consolation, but at least they’ll never hurt anyone else.”

Yuri’s eyes—pale eyes. Pale hair, like Byleth’s, but pale from birth. He is never anything other than what he is. No matter how he twists himself to get what he wants, the core remains the same.

“I don’t care.”

“You do. You’re just sad.”

“I’m angry,” Byleth says, not realizing it until the words are out of his mouth.

Yuri tilts his head. A question that’s not a question but an offer to be heard. And for once it’s what Byleth wants. At the very least, if he doesn’t get what’s inside of him out, he’s liable to explode.

Byleth makes a strange movement somewhere between a headshake and a shrug. He takes a breath. No words come out. He tries again.

“He… Jeralt—Jeralt never talked to me. Twenty years and I had to learn the truth from a book. I never knew anything about the world, I just followed him around and killed like he taught me to kill and he never talked to me about it but I never asked, either, and I don’t know if that’s his fault or mine, I don’t know anything. And now I can’t ask him and I’m just… angry,” he finishes quietly.

He deflates, gripping the edge of the desk. One of the many desks piled haphazardly into this room. Broken scraps decided too unfit for the students upstairs. This is where Byleth belongs. Somewhere dark, away from the light of proper society, filled with thieves and liars and murderers that at least know what they are and don’t try to shield it behind knightly vows.

Yuri moves to stand beside him. Something touches Byleth’s back and he jumps, only to realize it’s Yuri’s hand.

“What now?”

“What do you mean ‘what now?’ I’m comforting you.”

“Okay…”

“Do you want me to stop?”

Byleth shakes his head. Yuri rubs his back, squeezing each time he reaches Byleth’s shoulders, and eventually tension he didn’t realize he was carrying starts to ease. Torchlight flickers, low and warm. Byleth lets his head hang, his eyes close.

“It’s quiet,” he says, “without Sothis.”

“I can imagine.”

“She was bossy. Opinionated. And now it’s…” Byleth lifts his hand, gesturing limply to his head, “only one voice. Echoing back, over and over. And I’m not sure I recognize it. I’ve changed a lot lately. I guess maybe I’ll keep changing. But now I won’t know what parts are me and what parts are her.”

“Does it matter?”

“How does it not?”

Yuri hums and he thinks, making a big show of it. Head tilted back, eyes to the arching stone ceiling.

“You’re a lot like Jeralt,” he says. “What I knew of the guy, anyway. As much as you might not want to hear that right now. And Sitri, from what he wrote I can see her in you—and you never even met her. But I see your friends too. Dimitri especially, you’re both very similar at your cores. You and Felix, better at fighting than talking. Dedue is teaching you to garden. Mercedes sparked your interest in horror stories. Isn’t it natural to pick up bits and pieces of everyone around us? It all mixes together into something unique.”

“I don’t think that’s the same thing.”

“Think what you want. All I know is the man I know. And like I said: I like him. I… probably always will. No matter how he grows and changes.”

A smile pushes its way out and Byleth lifts his head. “Probably?”

Yuri leans closer. “Yeah,” he says, “probably,” and his hand slides over Byleth’s shoulder, hooking his arm around his neck and pulling him the rest of the way into a kiss.

So often Byleth’s lungs are what tells him he’s alive. After a battle, his heart is still but his chest heaves, wind tears his throat open. His body demands its place in this world and fights on.

Now, wrapped in another man’s arms, he’s breathless. His lungs won’t work. He’s lightheaded. Leaning sideways on the edge of the desk, he can’t keep his balance. To keep from falling, he reaches out and grabs the first thing he finds—the front of Yuri’s shirt. Yuri’s arm around his neck, Yuri’s lips on his, Yuri is everywhere Byleth is.

He pulls back with a smile on his face, then collapses back into pillows.

“You’re so stupid.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Byleth says. “Looks like neither of us have any sense for the romantic.”

Yuri backhands Byleth’s bare chest, the smack resounding off the walls. Byleth squints before lowering his head to Yuri’s shoulder. The sun outside the bedroom windows rises ever higher but the chill persists, so he pulls the blankets higher and closes his eyes.

“Look,” Yuri says, “I don’t care about some stupid flowers you can’t make bloom, I care about you. And I assure you, your lack of gardening skills don’t enter into it.”

Byleth smiles to himself but it quickly fades. Free from Yuri’s sharp gaze, it’s easier to admit: “I want to deserve this.”

Yuri doesn’t have anything to say to that. No hollow promises about how of course Byleth deserves happiness, everyone deserves happiness—he knows. Chances are he’s haunted by the same fears.

Instead of pretty words, what Yuri does is rest a hand atop Byleth’s head, cradling it to his shoulder. Yuri’s hair cascades down his chest, so much longer than when they were younger. With nothing else to do, Byleth starts playing with it, threading it between his fingers.

“I’m thinking of cutting it,” Yuri says. “Speaking of pointless symbolic gestures.”

His chest rises and falls with calm, even breath. Even after having barely greeted the day, the rhythm starts to lull Byleth back to sleep.

“Will you still love me if I do?”

“Always.”

Yuri’s laugh rumbles through his chest. Byleth presses his ear against it.

Heart, lungs, throat. A beating heart. All beneath soft, warm skin.

“If I were you,” Yuri says, “rather than flowers, I’d be more worried about the fact that the next archbishop just engaged in premarital sex mere days before his inaugeration. Doesn’t the church frown upon that kind of thing?”

Byleth’s eyes pop open.

“Oh,” he says, “shit.”

Yuri snorts. “Well, considering you’re not even devout in the first place, it’s pretty far down your list of sins.”

The rest of the monastery starts to wake. Somewhere, distantly, knights are running drills. There are voices down the hall, the peeling laughter of refugee children getting shooed away by what sounds like the chamberlain.

With the ceremony days away, everyone has been busy preparing. Byleth should be helping. But just this once, he turns his head. He presses a kiss to Yuri’s collarbone. He thinks about giving Yuri his mother’s ring. He kisses Yuri’s neck.

“Byleth, you’re… sure you’re okay with this, yeah?”

Byleth turns from the mirror, a simple motion made complicated by long robes, heavy in a way armour was never heavy. The high collar nearly blocks Yuri completely out of sight until they’re facing each other, standing on opposite sides of the vestry.

“You of all people should know why I’m doing this.”

“It would be stupid not to,” Yuri says, “I know. But I also know what it’s like to—” he gestures, shakes his head “—to play a role, I guess. I’m just saying, if you wanna run, I’ve always got room for you on my payroll. Fucking your boss is kind of exciting, right?”

Byleth tilts his head, feels a dangling ornament on his headpiece roll with the motion.

“No more than fucking the archbishop.”

Yuri snorts. But his grin falters too quickly, disappearing the moment he turns his head.

Though not officially part of the ceremony, he’s dressed in his best, radiant and weightless with his hair freshly cut and face bare. But he’s kneading his palm and avoiding Byleth’s eye. With nothing left to hide behind, he’s as vulnerable and raw as bruised flesh.

Byleth looks over his shoulder and his reflection looks back. Faded hair, faded eyes, robes more elaborate than anything he would ever choose to wear. Never has he been one to say much, but there are things Yuri deserves to hear.

“I think… I’ve already been playing a role,” Byleth says, the man in the mirror says.

The demon, the professor, the tactician—the victim. Blaming the world, blaming his father, blaming himself. Byleth takes a deep breath. His reflection takes a deep breath. They turn away from each other, to their own Yuris, each busy fidgeting with a lantern on a nearby desk.

“This isn’t the most noble thing I could do,” Byleth says, “but it’s something only I can. Rhea wouldn’t hand the reins over to anyone else. I can move the church away from the damage she’s caused. I can help people. Give rather than take. And then I can find my own reason for everything.”

Finally Yuri looks at him. Eyes wide, lips parted, he’s no longer fidgeting but standing as still as a spooked deer. Shock is strange on him. It throws Byleth off, sapping whatever confidence he started speaking with, leaving him scratching his head and searching for words he barely had sight of in the first place.

“—and, uh…”

Yuri laughs—just once, like nothing is actually funny. One hand on his hip, the other rubs his brow.

“Ahh, you,” he sighs. “Always giving me a taste of my own medicine.”

With one final look in the mirror, Byleth takes a couple cautious steps across the vestry. His boots click against the stone floor, echoing off the stone walls.

“Yuri. If we’re right about your blood, you and I have more lifetimes ahead of us. Maybe—maybe in one of them we won’t be killers or leaders of man.”

Yuri’s bitter grin softens into something genuine. “Sure. Maybe by then you’ll be a better gardener. You could become a farmer.”

“And maybe by then you’ll tell me your real name,” Byleth says, “Yuri,” and he stops just short of arm’s reach. He holds out his hand, palm to the ceiling.

In the space of Yuri looking from the hand to his eye, calculating Byleth’s words against the truth of everything he knows, the vulture of vulnerability starts to pick at Byleth’s skin. Around Yuri, every want and need he never realized he had, every thought he kept to himself—it all spills out of him. Red and raw, slipping between his fingers, grotesque and indecent. He’s pulled apart and bleeding out, exposed on display for all the world to see—until Yuri takes his bloodstained hand like he’s worth treating gently.

He brings it to his lips and bows to kiss each finger.

“Maybe,” he murmurs, and warm breath dances over Byleth’s skin. Now, as always, the touch places him. It makes him real, existing in relation to another.

The unbeating heart in Byleth’s chest aches like it’s trying to move against its confines. Alive in spite of it—in spite of everything—he wraps his arms around Yuri’s shoulders and fills his lungs with air.


End file.
